Monday, August 20, 2018

"To All the Boys I've Loved Before" - the movie version

My YA book club had a gathering to watch "To All the Boys I've Loved Before". I adored the book by Jenny Han and the short version is that the movie captures the essence of it in the best way.

The story is about a middle sister who has been writing letters to boys she has crushes on to provide closure for herself, and storing the letters in a hat box. The letters get out into the world, causing the expected embarrassment, and because one of the letters was to the next door neighbor boy who, um, happens to be her older sister's very recent ex, she makes a deal with another letter recipient to pretend date so that it's clear any other crushes on her part are in the past. Said fake boyfriend has just broken up with his girlfriend and wants to make her jealous.

There are of course changes, compressions and all of that. The cast is amazing, and it managed to feel enough like a realistic depiction of now, and not something that would seem very dated in a few years, which is a neat trick.

Buzzfeed has this list of differences between the book and movie. To me, as a Virginia adjacent person, the movie being set in Oregon was also notable.